Yorkshire Water was privatised in 1989 under the Water Act, launched debt-free and promoted as the start of a new, efficient era. What followed was anything but. Today, the company carries almost £7bn in debt. Our rivers are polluted, our bills keep rising, and we’re told to pay still more for upgrades that should have been completed long ago. It is estimated that a third of our water bill goes on debt and dividends. This isn’t bad luck, it’s the inevitable outcome of a business model that puts shareholder returns ahead of public service. It’s time we stopped accepting it.
Profit over pipes
Since privatisation, Yorkshire Water and other regional water companies have paid out £7.6bn in dividends while loading themselves with borrowings. Company accounts show net debt climbing year after year, even as profits were distributed to parent companies and investors. That money should have gone into pipes, treatment works, and pollution prevention – the basics of a modern water system. Instead, much of it was drained away through financial structures that benefited distant owners while leaving Yorkshire’s infrastructure to age and fail.
Paying twice for their failures
The pattern is clear enough. Ownership structures involving private-equity funds and holding companies allowed the business to borrow heavily against its assets – assets guaranteed by our bills. Those borrowings weren’t matched by equivalent new investment. They underwrote dividends and corporate fees while Yorkshire’s water network fell further behind. When regulators later demanded urgent upgrades, the company claimed it needed higher bills to fund them. The truth is simpler: had those past payouts been reinvested, Yorkshire would have cleaner rivers and lower bills today. We’ve paid twice, once through inflated dividends folded into our bills, and now again to fix what should never have been neglected.
Private gain at public cost
Yorkshire Water announced a hosepipe ban for millions of users in July, and was one of six firms banned from paying “unfair” bonuses to their executives this year. Nicola Shaw, Yorkshire Water’s CEO had earlier stated that “It would not be appropriate to accept a bonus this year”, even before the legislation was introduced, given Yorkshire Water’s record on pollution.
What is not widely known, but was disclosed by The Guardian, is that Shaw had received £1.3mn in previously undisclosed extra pay since 2023 from Yorkshire Water’s parent, Kelda Holdings.
The debt on Yorkshire Water’s books isn’t ours. We didn’t borrow it and we haven’t benefited from it. It represents value extracted from Yorkshire and transferred elsewhere, enabled by a regulatory model that never truly protected us.
We were promised better
Walk along Yorkshire’s rivers and you can see what this system has delivered: pollution incidents have multiplied, treatment works are spilling sewage after heavy rain, beaches are closed and wildlife suffers. Yet, company accounts record that senior pay and bonuses continued during the very years these problems intensified.
Privatisation was sold as a route to efficiency, innovation and investment. Instead, we got financial engineering dressed up in corporate language. The so-called regulated monopoly model failed because regulators were too slow or too weak to stop the steady transfer of wealth from Yorkshire bill-payers to international investors. Every Yorkshire household now pays for polluted rivers, for neglected infrastructure, for debt that funded payouts, and for a system that has clearly failed.
Water for the people
Yorkshire water should belong to Yorkshire’s people, not to remote investors who take more than their share. In principle, the remedy isn’t complicated, even if the details need careful work.
First, if a company cannot meet its public obligations, the government has powers under the new Water (Special Measures) Act to intervene. That route was used in other sectors – Railtrack and Northern Rock – when essential services failed. Such intervention doesn’t automatically entitle shareholders to market-rate compensation. Parliament can restructure failing utilities in the public interest, ensuring continuity of service rather than payouts to investors.
Second, once restructured, Yorkshire Water should be rebuilt around community and public ownership. Yorkshire households (for a small investment) could take a real stake in their water company – not just as bill-payers but as owners with voting rights and a say in its future. This community share could be matched by a significant public-sector equity holding to guarantee oversight, stability and access to government-backed infrastructure bonds. Any remaining stake could be held by UK pension funds under strict conditions: capped returns, transparent accounts, and environmental performance requirements.
Local rebuilding and reinvestment
Returns to community shareholders could come as credits on bills or reinvestment in local water projects. Money would circulate in Yorkshire instead of vanishing offshore. Governance would change too: with some elected community directors, transparent reporting, and executive pay tied to environmental and service results rather than profit extraction.
The billions needed for infrastructure renewal could come from Yorkshire infrastructure bonds – government-backed, offering modest, stable returns, with Yorkshire residents given first opportunity to invest. We’d be rebuilding the system we all rely on, while keeping the benefits here at home.
The fine detail will need legal and financial expertise once there’s political will. What matters now is the principle: Yorkshire’s water should belong to Yorkshire’s people and not to distant shareholders who’ve already taken more than they deserve.
A challenge to Yorkshire’s leaders
To White Rose Group: Now prove your commitment to devolved power. Back a concrete, time-bound plan to return Yorkshire Water to the people of Yorkshire. Pledge your support and take the lead in ending profiteering from our region.
To Luke Campbell, Mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire: stand up now for everyone in your region. Publicly commit to forming a cross-Yorkshire alliance to demand that Yorkshire Water returns to Yorkshire’s hands. The time to act is now.
To Yorkshire’s MPs, councilors and regional leaders: the water flowing through our taps and rivers should be managed for the public good, not private gain. The legal tools exist. The financial models exist. The moral case is unanswerable. What’s missing is courage.
You don’t have to sign up for every detail today. But commit to the principle of community ownership, stop shareholder extraction, and put Yorkshire people in charge of their own essential infrastructure.
Why now?
Water companies across England are in crisis. Thames Water teeters on insolvency. Southern Water has already undergone emergency intervention. Yorkshire Water’s debt continues to grow. The privatisation experiment has failed, and the bill is being handed to us, the customers who never had a say in any of it.
Many people will know Feargal Sharkey as the lead singer of the band The Undertones. Now, his tireless campaigns have made river pollution a national issue that politicians can no longer ignore. Yorkshire has never been shy of standing up for itself, and we’re being pushed once again. Our bills rise, our rivers are fouled, and we’re told to pay for the very repairs that should have been done decades ago, while shareholders reap the rewards.
What happens next?
The White Rose Group, our mayors, and civic leaders have the platform to make this issue impossible to ignore. If they’re serious about Yorkshire controlling its own destiny, this is where it begins. Not with more consultation papers, but with a concrete plan to bring our water service back under accountable and local control.
Every Yorkshire resident who opens a water bill, every family that can’t swim in rivers that should be clean, every community watching infrastructure crumble while profits flow elsewhere – they’re all waiting to see if Yorkshire’s leaders have the courage to act.
Yorkshire’s water was handed over debt-free in 1989. It’s been exploited ever since. The question is simple: are we going to let that continue, or are we going to take back what’s ours?
I’m challenging the White Rose Group and Luke Campbell to answer that, not with consultations or committees, but with a commitment to make Yorkshire Water ownership by Yorkshire people a reality.
It’s time to show leadership. The people of Yorkshire are watching.
